Man gets prison time for slaying 16-year-old stepson

Clarence Brown Sr. told police seven different tales about how his 16-year-old stepson came to have a fatal gunshot wound to the chest in the family's Oxford Circle living room in July 2008.

His explanations for Michael Giles-Brown's death ranged from the boy committing suicide to his accidentally shooting himself while playing with the handgun.

Skeptical police arrested Brown, 33, a civilian security guard at the Willow Grove Naval Air Station Base, in Montgomery County, and he was convicted in December of third-degree murder, possession of an instrument of crime and recklessly endangering another person.

Though the prosecution never speculated on the motive for Brown's actions, Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart yesterday sentenced him to 12 1/2 to 25 years in prison, turning aside the prosecutor's request for 25 to 50 years and the defense team's bid for five to 10 years.

"This is an extremely disturbing case, and an extremely puzzling case," said Minehart, who went on to explain that he did not think Brown's intent was to kill Michael and that he felt the defendant had the potential to do good in the future.

A weeping Brown stood and turned his stocky frame to face Michael's extended family in the courtroom.

"I didn't mean to hurt my son," he said of the boy he adopted at age five. He asked the family to look into their hearts to find a way to forgive him.

Assistant District Attorney Bridget Kirn never offered a motive.

"What can you say about a man who kills his stepson?" she asked "There's no crime that's more horrific than that. When you're evaluating what a murderer is, we don't have to get into the mind of someone who would shoot, at point-blank range, a child."

Defense attorney Andrea Konow said the shooting was an "aberrant act of recklessness."

Brown is married to Michael's mother, Nicole Daniels, with whom he has two biological sons, ages 9 and 4. The 9-year-old boy witnessed the shooting and testified during the trial that his father told Michael to put his hands above his head before he shot him from five feet away.

"My heart will never be the same," Nicole Daniels said in a statement read in court.

"I don't understand what happened July 11, 2008, in the afternoon for Clarence Sr. to take Michael's life - a son he said he loved,"

"Mr. Brown stopped my bloodline," Michael Kevin Giles, the victim's biological father, told the judge.

"I don't have any other kids. . . . I'm going to have to walk through the rest of my life with this on my mind: I lost my son to some stupidity."